Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet, Dr. Timothy D. Padgett and Roberto Rivera
Back in April, a reckless assisted suicide bill looked like it was going to pass and be made British law. Instead, it was shut down by the House of Lords. Then, in May, the Irish parliament rejected an expanded abortion bill by a vote of 85-30. On this side of the Atlantic, things are headed in the opposite direction.
Like all such “mercy” killing laws, Canada’s MAiD was promised as an option only for those facing imminent death and who could consent. Things are long past that and will likely go even further. Recently, a Quebec physician suggested that the nation’s already draconian MAiD program be expanded to include babies. In response, Brandan Tran of Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition said:
Canadian law currently permits the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for critically ill newborns. This medical practitioner’s proposal goes further. He calls for the calculated killing of an infant. These are patients, babies, who cannot speak, cannot consent, and cannot ask for help. If we cannot draw the line here, I am not sure where medical professionals imagine the line to be.
Physician-assisted suicide is always sold to the public as a “compassionate” measure, necessary to spare those with no reasonable chance of recovery fromunbearable pain and suffering during the last days of their lives. In every context in which it has been made legal, however, assisted suicide has never remained limited to the rare instances for which it was sold.
There are reasons this slope has proven so slippery everywhere it has been made legal. Once it’s decided that certain lives are not worth living, the list of people eligible for assisted suicide inevitably grows. It becomes easier to re-evaluate lives based on some criteria other than intrinsic value, such as convenience or financial costs. It’s a small step indeed from “eligible to die” to “expected to die.”
That’s why, wherever physician-assisted suicide has been legalized, it happens by a series of bait-and-switch claims to the public. “Terminal” illness is often expanded to include “chronic” illnesses and permanent disabilities. In Belgium, the Netherlands, and Canada, even mental illness and depression are considered sufficient justification for suicide. Given this trajectory, it’s only a matter of time before the requirement of an actual illness is dispensed with.
For example, the original promise was that only those certifiably in their right minds could be euthanized. But that was always a lie. Anyone who goes into an American emergency department claiming they want to die would be diagnosed with “suicidal ideation,” admitted, and put on a psych hold. To not do so, in fact, would be medical malpractice. Suicidal ideation is rightly regarded as a symptom of an underlying mental disorder. People with untreated mental illnesses are not allowed to make life-and-death decisions.
Or at least they weren’t. In Oregon, for example, since physician-assisted suicide was legalized, over 96% of people given lethal drugs did not undergo a psychiatric evaluation. This is why, as a “What Would You Say” video on the topic so clearly explained, there’s nothing compassionate about physician-assisted suicide. In fact, it is the exact opposite of compassion, the abdication of a civilized society’s responsibility to offer care to those who need it most when they need it most.
In his book The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy described how a society devolves to the point of thinking that killing patients instead of healing them is compassion. A psychiatrist, Percy wrote of well-trained and exquisitely credentialed doctors who “turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind.” What Percy wrote in 1987 has become reality. Some form of assisted suicide is now legal in 13 states and the District of Columbia.
Like abortion, the legal fight against assisted suicide is only part of the battle. It must become unthinkable to strip away the intrinsic and indelible dignity every human possesses, no matter their life condition. Otherwise, there is no way to stop from sliding down a slope so slippery.